Farms and Cemeteries

Waikato Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2051, 29 August 1885, Page 6 (Supplement)

Farms and Cemeteries

A ooei) deal of novelty was imported into the disoussioni of the beat meani of disposing of the dead by Mr. Wynter Blyth'a paper at the Health Conference. He ia convinced that if we continue to bury our dead at all we ought to adopt an entirely new plan. Startfrom the principle of the rotation of crops, Mr. Blyth suggests that every pieoe of agricultural land in the country should take its turn in being used as a cemetery. Aa soon as any plot was filled five years should be allowed to elapse, and then it should be restored to cultivation. " Beneath the waving oorn or the atately pines the remaina of the dead would be free from desecration ;" and perhaps,, on the principle of the Persian poet, who thought that " never blow* so red the rose as where some buried Orcser lies," the dead would " live again" in plants or trees or oorn " made better by their presence." Mr. Blyth calculates that the agricultural land in these islands would give room for 10,340,000,000 interments, and that at the rate of 000,000 deaths a year it would take 30,000 years before any old graves need be again utilized. If tbia be really the only safe mode of burial the chances of cremation ought to improve. — Pall Mall Oatette.